Mountain Home American Legion Baseball head coach Lester White believes he might have one of his fastest, most balanced Lockeroom teams in several years coming into the 2018 season.

Fourteen players comprise this year’s Lockeroom roster, and 15 more make up the younger Junior Legion team.

Lockeroom went 19-17 last season, finished conference runner-up and won one game at the state tournament under White, who enters his 35th season with a 945-601-5 career record.

“We have them from all over the Twin Lakes Area,” White said of the program’s 29 players from 12 different area schools, “from Yellville to Highland, and south to Melbourne and Cave City. We probably have three or four on there that were unexpected. And that helps the younger guys, because we didn’t have to pull from their team. So far, in practice, they look good. We’ll have to wait and see. After a couple days of practice, they’re all buddies.”

“The most pleasant thing is it might be the fastest team I’ve had in years,” White said. “I have six boys who run under four seconds from first movement at the plate, through first base. It shouldn’t take us long to get done what we want to get done. We’ll give them all a chance, and I guess, eventually, the cream will rise to the top.”

The Lockeroom is looking to post its sixth consecutive winning season. White said his team is deep with both infielders and outfielders this season.

“Several of them can play different positions,” he said. “And we have three catchers who can catch at any time. The last couple years, a week or so before the state tournament, we’ve had players go down. Last year I lost a catcher and a pitcher. I had to bring Ben in to catch, and with that, I lost an outfielder. And I moved Luke to first and lost another outfielder. We were just short. We need to keep everybody healthy.”

White said as many as nine or 10 of his players can pitch this season. Big additions to this year’s pitching staff are McClain, the Bombers’ right-handed ace this season, and Roork, a lefty from Viola.

“Caleb Johnson, his uncle, Dustin Johnson, played for me in the 90s,” White said. “Hunter Wojcik is a pleasant surprise. He’s a young, good athlete. Strider is left-handed, so I have two left-handed pitchers.”

The Lockeroom will see a few new teams on its schedule this season and also the return of a district tournament — July 20-23 in Cabot — to advance to the state tourney, which is scheduled for July 27-31 in Conway.

Lockeroom opens its season at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at Cooper Park against Searcy. The Junior Legion team hosts Salem at 5:30 p.m. June 5 to begin its season.

“I’m just ready to get started, and we’ll get started Tuesday with Searcy,” White said. “It’s lined up now where we play Batesville, Paragould and Cabot (for conference play). But we drive down through Batesville and Searcy to go play our district tournament at Cabot.”

The Alley-White American Legion Post 52 team, Mountain Home’s Junior Legion team, has nine players returning from last year’s squad that went 8-10.

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Carter Graves of Viola pitches during the Mountain Home American Legion Baseball intrasquad game Saturday night.(Photo: Neal Denton/The Baxter Bulletin)